Google Unveils The Google Pack 473
7hunderstruck writes "Google yesterday announced the release of Google Pack, a 'free collection of essential software'. Along with Google's own programs, such as Google Toolbar and Google Earth, Google Pack contains Firefox, Adobe Reader, a six month subscription to Norton Antivirus, and Trillian as well as other apps. Any respectable /. user should have most of this suite installed already (excluding a few things), but it will be nice to make it all widely available to the general public." Commentary on ZDNet.
nortan anti-virus (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Pack is only available for WindowsXP (Score:2, Insightful)
Branded? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why google are doing this, unless they're getting paid (in money or some other way) by the producers of the software...
I Guess I'm Not A Respectable /. User (Score:1, Insightful)
> already (excluding a few things)...
I don't have most of those things installed, couldn't if I wanted to because I don't use Microsoft software, and wouldn't want most of it even if I could install it. I guess I'm not a real Slashdotter.
Odd statement (Score:2, Insightful)
That's an odd statement. Weren't all these software packages widely available to the general public before? I like Google and all but come on. I really don't see what the big deal is. You can download all these programs from Google? Whupty-fword. And it doesn't work with my Mac OS X box which makes sense because I don't need Ad-Aware and Norton Antivirus for safe surfing. Plus PDF viewing is built into the OS through Preview.
Am I missing something here?
Norton? (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a reason this is XP only (Score:3, Insightful)
People who use Linux are not their target, Linux distributions come with all the apps you could need and very few newbies would likely have the option to buy a Linux system.
For them it's almost always WinXP forced down their throats unless they notice these Mac things in the store they bought their iPod - and there's no need for this pack on the mac either - the Mac already comes with a modern web browser, a decent desktop search (since Tiger), the iLife apps for photos, etc.
There's two things wrong with the Google offering and that's all I could see - one is the choice of anti-virus (only free for a limited time and not the most trustworthy name around) and the central updater duplicates the roles that the Firefox and Adobe updaters perform. They should have disabled the individual updates if they were going for a central solution.
What a letdown. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bet their stock pricer just went down.
Re:"Free" (Score:3, Insightful)
Why Norton?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Any respectable /. reader"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazed they have included Adobe Reader (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Free" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Any respectable /. reader"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that they're giving back something at least as important as code. Open source is a wonderful idea but of limited importance unless the software actually gets used. Google is adding its heavyweight brandname and reputation to the side of open source.
Really, they're doing something only a big corporation with a good public image can do. Code would be great, but it doesn't take a megacorporation to write code.
Re:ClamWin (Score:4, Insightful)
They said Adobe Reader, which last I checked was completely free and does a better job rendering than any open source PDF program does. Don't get me wrong, it has enough issues I typically use xpdf or other programs, but I still keep a copy of Acrobat Reader around because certain things just don't render correctly in anything else.
Re:What a letdown. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google shouldn't have a free ticket here. Their stock is high and they've done some good stuff, but that doesn't mean the whole world cares when they take a shit and something like Google Pack drops into the toilet.
Re:Google Pack is only available for WindowsXP (Score:5, Insightful)
What surprises me is that OpenOffice.org is not included in the Google Pack despite of the partnership announcement.
Re:Not Gaim? (Score:4, Insightful)
google a true friend of open source? dont think so. 400 times 4500$ for the summer of code is some money and it has some benefits for the open source development in general. but, first, compare this prize money to the millions that they paid this ms guy. second and more important, google gets to know 400 bright people and can approach/hire them when they are students - not necessary to pay millions to hire them from a competitor at a later stage. this certainly is worth the 400 times 4500.
I don't see the analogy here. They're hiring students to work on Free Software projects for the summer... The students can do what they want afterward. Many large companies have internships for students, but few of them involve Free Software.
they take lead developers (read: directly weaken the os community) from ff and gaim and hire them to work for google.
That's what many companies do, hiring smart developers. While it's not good- I don't see how Google is any worse than any other company for this practice. Google has been relatively skimpy on the Free Software front, but code.google.com does have some useful programs.
Re:Norton? (Score:3, Insightful)
While Symantec's Norton AV is one of the most notorious AV programs out there, if you're relying on an AV to protect you ... as the latest exploit shows ... you are already in trouble.
AV products "protect" you as much as using garbage bags on top of your shoes when walking across broken glass.
Re:ClamWin (Score:4, Insightful)
It's freely available software anyway, I suspect you can even find copies of it bundled with your breakfast cereal.
Re:Odd statement (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right, but you have to think of the average end user and Google's needs as well. Google Pack is a good idea for a couple of reasons:
Re:Why "XP Only"? (Score:5, Insightful)
XP has 73% of the market. Up about 1% a month. W2K 15%. Down about 1% a month.
Mac and Linux 3%. Up 1% since 2003. Linux remaining pretty much where it was in July 20004.OS Platform Stats [w3schools.com] This is how the world looks to a developer. I'll leave it to your imagination to consider W2K's place in the home market.
Picasa = iPhoto (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen this before, and I have NO IDEA where people get that from. Picasa is a photo collection program. It lets you make small edits (crops, reduce red-eye, color balance, etc) but it is not an image editor. It is designed to help your organize your photos and find them easily.
It is the best program I have seen for that purpose on Windows. It really is great. And free too (back when it cost money, Wolf Camera would give it out on photo-cds you got back with your pictures; then Google bought it an made it free for everyone).
The only program I like more for that purpose is iPhoto, but that isn't available for Windows (obviously).
Re:Why "XP Only"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Any respectable /. reader"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google seems to take without really giving much (except talk). Yeah they have funded some stuff, but really, in relation to their income, it's not even a drop in the bucket.
Let's give them some time. Great wealth has a kind of inertia-- there is a lot of organization behind the scenes that has to be done before newly acquired wealth can be put in motion.
But I think we can see where Google is going now-- from TFA:
"We realize software distribution will have to become one of our core competencies," quote from Marissa Mayer, Google Product Manager.
That sounds like a major commitment in an area that the FOSS communities haven't yet addressed very well.
Re:Branded? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Any respectable /. reader"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Similar to Red Hat who employs many of the GCC and kernel developers. Perhaps Google contributes simply by employing others and letting them do their thing on Google's dime?
Crazy, but many companies that contribute don't do it in the grandiose "Here's our enterprise application, you can have it!" fasion. Most simply have developers that use open source and allow them to contribute their code back to the project.
Re:They're considering Mac, not caring about *nix (Score:4, Insightful)
There are several reasons why it makes sense for Google not to bow to the Open Source movement and users, first and foremost being that people who use *nix don't need this level of ease. Second of which, being that they've tried to appeal to this crowd by offering the least evil solution in most markets they enter into. But thirdly, it's because Open Source zealots are a bunch of backstabbing pricks that don't recognize a good thing when it's handed to them or their loved ones that -don't- run free-as-in-speech everything.
Fortunately, Google -is- working on Mac support where it's relevant. They should get credit for that much, rather than attacked and derided for not supporting an Operating System that can't get its shit together even to agree on a standard way of installing software.
I run Debian on headless servers, but after trying to install various flavors of *nix on my P2-366 Toughbook, determined that none of the distributions will handle such a low-spec system as well as even -XP- does. Quit whining about Google and fix that crap.
Re:code.google.com (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that you've forgotten what OSS is about. It is free, and written to be useful to everyone, not as a means to make other people write code for you. Google is taking advantage of this the way it's expected to.
Think of how normal people use OSS. I myself have a full operating system with an awesome desktop environment, and I use software that's the best of the best. But have I written a full window manager with a widget system, a web browser, an instant messaging client, a first-person shooter, and countless other apps to contribute back? No, I've made a small bugfix to the Greasemonkey script I use for my signatures and a small hack to better integrate a plugin in a content management system. Once I wrote a breakout clone in Java that nobody wanted. That's about it, and it's okay, because that little bit still adds to the whole. I think Google's contributions are more than equivilant.
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Re:Odd statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, you are missing something. You/We are not the norm. We are the exception to the norm. If our way was sufficient, there wouldn't be a need for stuff like this. How many of you have done support for friends, families, bullies? :-) How many of those people don't install some of these programs, cause it's too much trouble? How many of them have no idea what ad-ware/spyware means? How many have called you asking about how to do simple, menial (to us anyway) tasks, that could be solved with some of this software? I don't know about you, but for me, it's a large proportion of the support I give.
What the original statement was trying to say is that most/many geeks using Windows (Shut up, yes there are some of us using it. No you're not all that funny), already have most of these installed. For me it was about 70%. Are there better alternatives out there? Probably, but that's not the point. The included software is a collection of fairly good, mainstream, respected choices for in each of their fields. I can tell my family/friends to click this link and install ONE program and then, not have to worry. It will take care of installing all of those pieces. BTW, all of those installs are INVISIBLE. There are NO dialogs to click, no choices neccessary, which is great for the large majority who will just click through the dialogs anyway. It also detects if you already have it installed and doesn't bother you about those. Oh and it keeps them up to date. Automatic installs of windows patches weren't created for us geeks, it was created for the millions of users who don't know what a windows patch is and why it's needed.
Google isn't the one that needs to get a clue, we are. As a software engineer, I have a lot of respect for large companies who make software that just bloody works (for the common user).
Bravo google. And thank you.
Re:"Any respectable /. reader"? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of their products are available for free, even if they're not open-source. And they're also funding certain open-source projects, which is more than we can say for most other companies. According to Netcraft, Yahoo! and Altavista both run FreeBSD, and AskJeeves uses quite a few Linux servers - but I have yet to hear about any of these funding open-source projects. Why don't we start complaining more about them and less about Google - at least Google had "Summer of Code" to help out open-source projects and is providing funding for some open-source projects.
Lie much? (Score:2, Insightful)
really [google.com]
Re:code.google.com (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the entire point of OSS. Everyone contributes a small amount, and benefits from everyone else's contribution. The only way it could be the other way around would be if you were the sole / primary contributor to every single piece of OSS you use - and no one is in this situation.